Tumblroth

The cardinal rule in newspaper reporting is that two data points is a trend. This morning I got one (OK, maybe .5 ) about the economy turning around while dropping my kid off at school.

I was talking to someone whose husband makes massive ovens used in semiconductor fabs. This guy looked like death when I last saw him in December. He travels to Asia every other week or so to sell his equipment, but his last few trips then had been complete disasters. No one was buying. He was about to shut down his Malaysian plant and wasn’t sure whether he could even hold on to his business.

Now in May, he’s apparently back in action: companies are buying equipment from him, maybe not at the volume he’d seen in 2007, but they were definitely shelling out rather than just fixing old equipment. He’s even thinking about hiring back some of the employees he had to lay off. And he’s sleeping again, which his wife was particularly happy about. What I found especially interesting, though, was that he was winning new business. Why? Because a bunch of his competitors had gone out of business.

This is how a recovery happens. Demand picks up, fewer companies are there to meet it, prices start rising as a result, people get employed, and, let’s hope, the altimeter starts clicking up again. (Does that metaphor even work? Do altimeters click? Pilots are welcome to answer.)

Any other data points are also very welcome — even if they come from outside classroom 503.